


and if you never let me go, I will never let you down

by janie_tangerine



Series: but you and I, we've been through this maybe a hundred times before [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Group Homes, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Modern Westeros, Multi, Reincarnation, Robb Stark is a Gift, Romance, Soulmates, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Underage Drinking, don't worry i'm not after him this time i swear, except that in this fic he's kinda fucked up, theon is the one with his shit together for once wow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:30:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3820507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>where everyone is reincarnated in modern times Westeros. Plot twist: people are also soulmates these days. Also, where Robb Stark really doesn't think this twenty-first century business has improved much of anything but he might be about to change his mind.</p><p>ETA: extra Theon POV of a certain scene added.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenWithABeeThrone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/gifts).



> So: this was the ending extra section to [all this life just feels like a series of dreams](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3820291) \- it was supposed to be the bonus section where he actually *did* die at the RW but ends up reincarnated in modern times, but I'm posting it separately because I might want to write more in this verse and it just was more convenient to have it on its own. 
> 
> It fulfilled a prompt that went like _[Modern-day Westeros](http://fucktheon.tumblr.com/post/95912823413/wardenofthenorth-theojoiegrise), with a reincarnation twist. Who's still the same, who's done a complete 180 from their original personality, who's struck a balance between their past personality and their current one? Who remembers and drunkenly rants at HBO's terrible historical fiction and lists all the things they got wrong, who doesn't remember and thinks all this interest in a period of time thousands of years ago is weird, who gets flashes of memory that they can't quite make out and wonders why a tourist attraction or a museum or even a parking lot feels so familiar to them and only slowly remembers over time?_. And since I was feeling like it, I also merged it with two wild card prompts from linked lists of prompts to choose from if nothing else inspired. They were _soulmate AU where you don’t know your soulmate until you touch them_ and _'I heard you singing backstreet boys at 3am and decided to sing along oops'_ \- ngl the last one called to my 'I was ten in 1998 and into bsb' soul so just assume that Westeros is actually a real world continent and BSB would exist in a version of it and pretend it makes sense. I swear it all does. Also you don't have to read the previous fic for this to make sense, it's a standalone. Title is always from Gaslight Anthem, nothing belongs to me.
> 
>  **Extra warnings** : Robb is seventeen/almost-eighteen in this and Theon's twenty-one. Premise: Robb is _really_ not an adjusted person in this for reasons that will be clear from the get go, so take into account that he does a lot of irresponsible shit. Now, I'm basing this on how it works in the UK re ages of consent/drinking, which'd be sixteen and eighteen, so there's technically underage drinking (even if since he's almost eighteen idk how much it counts, still, it's there). Also there's a throwaway mention of actual underage sex where he was thirteen and the partner was seventeen, but with both parties fully consenting (and he's definitely in the position to consent don't worry XD).
> 
> Also idk how I wrote two soulmate fics in a month but it happened, I guess.

In his defense, Robb is plastered.

He also should _not_ be drunk. He couldn’t be drunk until his next birthday, three months from now. And getting plastered legally should be the only good thing about turning eighteen for that matter.

It’s just his luck that the security guard of the night club two blocks from the group home he’s been living in since he was fourteen, who most probably does not remember being _the Hound_ in his former life, doesn’t really give a shit when it comes to sharing his alcohol and that for some reason he likes Robb enough to share it with him.

Robb drinks some more from the whiskey bottle Clegane had snuck him before and tries not to smash it on the pavement.

Yeah, right, just his luck. It’s three AM on a Thursday, he wants to throw up, he’s also nowhere near drunk enough and he really wishes all the pop culture bullcrap about reincarnation and second chances was right about something, because as far as he’s concerned, he’s had a pretty damned shitty deal.

Starting with remembering his death when he was five – the group home he was in then had this group of teenagers who were watching this documentary about the Red Wedding on some history-centered tv channel in the main hall, and he had walked past it, and he had heard someone blathering about _King Robb Stark’s responsibilities or lack thereof that couldn’t be assessed because of the lack of proper records_ and so on and –

Right. 

That was the second time he got fucked up by the system.

He says it’s the _second_ because he’s plenty sure that the first was the reason why he grew up in group homes in the first place – he’s sure that this reincarnation thing isn’t just in his head, he’s seen that, he’s spoken to others who remember it, hells, he only ever heard of Brienne of Tarth back when she was sworn to his lady mother, but she had been the only decent therapist he ever had in his life and she remembered everything, too.

He had actually told her about his suspicions – after all, if _he_ was here, then his family had to be as well, but he _grew up in three different group homes_ and never knew his real family in the first place, so obviously something went wrong when he was born. She had agreed, saying that it all was the same for her – her father, her now living brothers and sisters, her mother, and she had said she would try to look into it for him, and then clearly she got transferred to another city the week after.

Yeah, just his luck.

Anyway, remembering the wedding was just the beginning of it, because then he got sent to a different place as _he was too difficult to handle_ , and the different place wasn’t any much better, and being difficult to handle meant that no one coming to foster in kids ever considered bringing him home with them.

The place he was in when Brienne was his therapist was decent, though – the only good one he ever was in. The people checking in on you were nice, and he was roomies for a few months with Jeyne Poole – she didn’t remember him or old Westeros at all, and thought that it was weird that people these days were so obsessed with the middle ages, and then she had found a nice foster family that looked like decent people. Also – well, she was nine, and she was so terribly nice to everyone – she always had a smile for you on your worst day (or her worst day, for that matter), and she’d help around with pretty much everything she could. She was a treasure – no wonder that she only stayed there for a few months before finding a family. Also, she actually didn’t think he was a complete lost cause, which had been nice enough for a change.

Of course that place ended up closing when Tywin Lannister, may he be damned in one of the seven hells if he ever gets there, won the elections and cut funds for foster care in the North (of course he didn’t cut them in the Westerlands), and so he ended up in a bigger group home full of people he either ignores or just fucking hates, and the worst thing is that one of fucking Walder Frey’s sons runs it. White Harbor is too close to the Trident, for his tastes, considering how many Freys he’s run into throughout his life.

Robb has no bloody clue if the guy remembers old Westeros or not, but he’s sure he somewhat does. If only because if he didn’t hold a grudge against him, Robb wouldn’t be paired with terrible roommate after terrible roommate, and whenever asking for a new therapist or to please look into his birth family, he would get some answer, at least. But his paperwork always seems to get lost, and people don’t harass him anymore just because he broke the nose of this poor excuse for a social worker named Slynt once. Sadly he’s the second in charge of the entire home, so breaking his nose wasn’t the smartest idea on Robb’s part. Other than that, no one gives a shit about his admittedly terrible grades in everything but PE and history, which means that if he manages to graduate high school he’s not going to go much further as far as education goes. Not that he’s bad at school in general, he knows that if he bothered to show up on time and do homework he would at least scrape by, but he just – can’t be fucking bothered, and so he’s failing most of his classes and he can’t even bring himself to give a damn.

Then you wonder why he’s never said no to a strong drink here and there, but today takes the fucking cake.

First thing, he got another speech from Slynt, kindly reminding him that in three months no one is obliged to keep a roof over his head anymore. As if he isn’t perfectly aware of that.

Second, he had been trying to help revise one of the few decent kids in the building – name’s Grenn, he was his latest roommate and for once he was sharing with a decent guy – and then lo and behold, it doesn’t last for ten minutes because Slynt comes in with someone new, introduces the kid as Pyp, the kid comes to sit at the table behind theirs, bumps into Grenn and it turns out that they’re _soulmates_.

Ah, right. Did Robb ever say that he _detests_ how it turns out that sometime between his first death and this admittedly not enchanting twenty-first century, people became _soulmates_?

He’s read a few books about that. Sounds like it’s something that has to do with the magic that rose in Westeros during the Long Night – dragons happened, zombies happened, and when everyone was dead and the Long Night was over and it seemed like things were going great for everyone, all magic disappeared except for this damned soulmates business.

And it’s been like that until now.

And it’s not even a _straight_ business – you don’t have marks, you don’t have anything guiding you – you just know when you touch your intended. Or something equally corny. It’s not like it happens often where he comes from, but sometimes people _do_ find each other and all the time he’s always deeply, horribly jealous. At least, when you do find your soulmate, it’s illegal to separate the two of you, and it means that you always have someone sticking by your side, that is somehow destined to be and that no one can take it away from you.

Considering he never really had anyone at all, it just stings when he sees it happen to other people.

It’s hilarious at times, though, because then you see the news and there’s blathering about things like former PM Stannis Baratheon marrying his former vice Davos Seaworth in Dorne, and people wasting hours in talk shows wondering how long had they known they were soulmates, and Robb thinks, _I remember what people said about Stannis centuries ago, sounds like this soulmates business at least is right when it counts._

Anyway, Robb had gone to get some coffee after that, scrounging together some money from the admittedly low allowance they get, and lo and behold, the tag on the barista’s shirt reads _Jeyne W_., and the moment Robb sees her chocolate brown eyes he recognizes her at once, and maybe, just maybe, he makes sure that their fingers brush as he takes the coffee from her, and for a moment he had hoped that –

Nothing happened.

Of course nothing happened.

She had told him goodbye and to enjoy his drink, and Robb had known then that she didn’t remember, and – maybe it was for the best. He read his history books – history was the only subject he never flunked, other than PE, after all. He knows that she killed herself before her second bedding with some Lannister whose name he forgot.

So he had come back after drinking the coffee just so he wouldn’t waste his money, and turns out that since Grenn has found his soulmate, they moved them together and he has a new roommate.

And thing is, his life has sucked up until now, but there’s a limit to everything and Robb draws it at sharing a room with fucking _Joffrey Baratheon_ , who’s named Joffrey Storm here and who hasn’t had an easy hand as well, at least, but it doesn’t change anything else.

Robb had pretended he didn’t remember. He had pretended he hadn’t known a thing.

He had kept his mouth shut at everything Joffrey had said, up until they left for dinner and the guy had walked up to him and asked, _how did it feel to have a knife stuck up your heart? Because it’s still better than poison_.

And –

And he just couldn’t keep himself from lashing out.

_You fucker_ , he had screamed, _do you know how it feels to die twice?_

And then he had punched Joffrey hard enough to break his nose, too, and he had ended up locked in detention without dinner.

Of course.

But thing is, he _did_ die twice, the second time _with_ Grey Wind, and he tries not to think about it most times because it just makes him feel such despair he can barely breathe, and –

Yeah, right.

He had opened the window, jumped out of it bringing just a jacket and his wallet with him, and went to find Clegane, who had taken a look at him and handed him the whiskey without even asking why.

Bless the man, for real.

And now it’s almost finished, it’s three in the morning, he’s sure no one’s looking for him, he’s tired and he just wants to curl up on the pavement and stay there forever.

_What did I do to deserve this_ , he wants to scream. _Wasn’t the first time round enough_?

He doesn’t know why the fuck he starts thinking about Jeyne’s then-favorite band. She was obsessed with those five idiots, and it never was Robb’s thing, but she was so _enthusiastic_ about bloody Backstreet Boys that four months of rooming with her were enough to learn a bunch of songs, and –

Well, shit, at worst they can arrest him. And he’s got a record already. Really, what the fucking fuck, he might as well just hit rock bottom.

Good thing this is a shitty neighborhood; too, because he doubts that he’s gonna keep honest citizens from a good night’s sleep.

“So many words for the broken heart, it’s hard to see in a crimson love,” he starts singing, leaning against the wall of this house that looks like some kind of cheap students’ lodgings. Considering that they’re right next to the nightclub, it’s probably for desperate people. “So hard to breathe, walk with me, and maybe –”

He swallows, drinks the last of the whiskey in a single gulp, swallows again. Also fuck, he had never thought he might actually relate to some of those fucking lyrics, but here he is, almost breaking down in tears over this entire fucking day while he’s singing Backstreet Boys songs out loud. “Nights of light so soon become, wild and free, I could feel the sun, your every wish, will be done, they tell me –”

“Show me the meaning of being lonely, is this the feeling I need to walk with?”

_What_? That was someone else. Singing from – from the window above him? A guy. Whose voice sounds kinda familiar, but he’s too drunk to place it.

And he can’t really bother to look up and move, and if he has a partner with an equally shitty life – shitty enough he’d sing along with him at this damned time – well, who is he to stop them?

“Tell me why, I can’t be there where you are?” He blurts, not even bothering to try and keep the key. “There’s something missing in my heart,” the other guy concludes from wherever he is.

Shit, Robb wishes he had more alcohol.

Yeah, maybe Jeyne had a point when she said that those five idiots didn’t have admittedly terrible lyrics. Albeit very mush anyway.

Gods, now he’s crying over fucking boyband songs. He has no shame. He should just go back home and accept whatever extra detentions they’ll give him, but then –

“Man, I’m not going to criticize your music choices because I mean, all of us have guilty pleasures, but aren’t you a bit too young to get shitfaced at three in the morning?”

_No_ , Robb thinks, and at that point he does put some effort in standing up and looking at the person who’s just come out of the building.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck._

Of course he recognized the voice before.

He doesn’t scream _Theon_ just out of some shred of self-control, and – damn everything, it’s _him_. No doubts about that – exactly the way Robb remembers him when he left for the islands, which means he has to be around twenty one, which – well, makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? And – the thing is, he spent half of his life wishing they’d meet again so Robb could punch him in the face at least, but then some historian found this book buried in the depths of the Night’s Watch old records.

Turns out it was Theon Greyjoy’s memoir, and it took them a couple of years to put it together and make a critical edition out of it, and then it had become – not a bestseller, but a fairly known book among the experts in that field, and Robb had read it, also because it finally shed light on what the hell had happened to him after the sack of Winterfell.

Robb might have had to repay the library, because he had cried so hard over that book he ruined it.

And after that his desire to punch Theon in the face had more or less disappeared completely, and instead he had thought _I want to see him again just to ask him how we got everything so wrong_.

But now – now he’s there standing in front of him, dressed in cheap but nice clothes that fit him and that make a nice figure, never mind that he’s not in his pjs at _this bloody time_ , and he looks – nice. Really nice. And he doesn’t look like he remembers either, and Robb wants to scream and he wants to just _forget everything_.

“I’ve got my reasons,” Robb manages to say without slurring too much. “An’ what’re you awake for at three AM anyway?”

“It was the last day of finals and I was treating myself to a movie marathon. I was planning on pulling a sweet, glorious all-nighter.”

So it really is some place for broke college students.

“Well, sorry ‘bout that. I’ll just – go back,” he says, and turns back, but then –

“Wait a moment,” Theon says, moving closer. “Listen, I’ll eat my own keys if you’re legal, and you’re not – you shouldn’t be out and about.”

“That’s okay. Group home’s just next door, what can happen?”

“Maybe I should call –”

“No! I mean – I shouldn’t’ve been –”

Suddenly the look in Theon’s eyes goes from cautiously amused to understanding. 

“Yeah, I guess I get it,” he finally says, sounding fully sympathetic with his plight. “My dad used to be a piece of shit,” he goes on, “good thing I haven’t seen him in years. Really, just sleep it off on my armchair. I swear to the gods I’m not the kind of creep who takes advantage of smashed teenagers.”

“Fuck you, I’m eighteen in three months,” Robb blurts back, and gods but he wants to take that offer, and guess what, of course Theon has to be the first person that shows him a shred of sympathy for the first time in three years.

“That wasn’t a no. Really, that’s okay, the couch’s pretty comfortable for that –”

Robb is sure he was about to say matter.

But then he reaches out and touches Robb’s arm to steady him, and Robb’s wearing a ripped shirt so there’s skin on skin contact and –

When you touch your soulmate, you know.

Robb never really realized what that could mean until now, but the moment Theon’s fingers touch his arm he _does._

He doesn’t even know how to put it. One moment everything’s normal, the next he feels some kind of shock run through his arm, and then for a moment he can _hear what Theon thinks_ , which actually is _what is happening what is this oh gods oh gods is that him of course it’s him_ , and then he’s feeling warm all over and he feels as if he’s going to feel physical pain if they stop touching, and that warm feeling is just so – so _nice_ , he might faint from it if he doesn’t get a grip. And then it’s gone, somewhat, but there’s – a sort of thrumming under his skin that makes him want to stay close and never leave, and from the way Theon’s looking at him, it might be mutual.

They stare at each other for a short while, and Robb has no clue of what the hell he should say, but then Theon closes his eyes for a moment, opens them again and _looks at him with full recognition_ and oh gods that can’t be possible, it can’t be –

“For fuck’s – _Robb_? What the hell happened to you?”

And he sounds absolutely pained as he says it. Like he actually cares and he probably does, hell, no, he has to if that book wasn’t forged, and Robb is plenty damned sure it wasn’t, and –

Fine.

He’ll blame it on being drunk later.

But it’s definitely not because of it that he ends up crying his eyes out against Theon’s shoulder while Theon’s arms come around his waist to hold him up.

It’s not really dignified that it becomes harder the moment he realizes that Theon doesn’t even try to get him back in – rather, he brings the both of them down into the ground and lets Robb just burrow against him without any shame left, and Robb doesn’t even think about the last time someone hugged him – it was Jeyne the day she left.

“I don’t –” he finally manages, “I just – what happened to me? Nothing worse than the first time round.” He feels strangely sobered up, even if it has to be some side effect of _finding your damned soulmate_ , but the thing is also that Theon feels good – he’s warm and he’s holding back tight enough to hurt and Robb doesn’t want to move at all.

“Shit, no, wait, you said group home before, does that mean –”

“I don’t know,” he blurts. “Never knew them. It always was group homes. Maybe something went wrong when I was born. I have no clue. I never managed to find out.”

“Well, considering that my family’s always more or less the same, at least the shitty side of it, something tells me you’re not the only Stark around. But – wait, fuck, how are you not – angry?”

The last part comes out in a whisper, as if he’s realizing the entity of the situation just now, and –

Robb is too tired for this.

“I read your memories when I was sixteen,” he says before Theon can start with a pity party. “And – listen, I might be drunk, but let me tell you, you can take me at face value here. All right?”

“… All right.”

“Fine. When I read that book, I cried over it so fucking much that I had to pay it back to the school library. I still have it somewhere, I think. Sometimes I just whip it out, look at it and think about how fucking dumb we had been back in the day. I know. I know everything. It’s been centuries. I don’t care. What I care is – this was the worst day of my life or close to it, I just found out that my roommate is Joffrey Baratheon and that _he remembers everything_ , they’ll probably kick me out of the bloody place the moment I turn eighteen, and I found out my _wife_ – then, at least – is a barista two blocks from here and she doesn’t remember a thing. Don’t you dare saying anything along the lines of ‘you should be wanting to strangle me’ because strangling you is the last thing on my mind right now. Got it?”

He honestly has no clue of what he expects, but it’s certainly not Theon’s lips curling up in a shit-eating grin that looks a lot more genuine than it used to look most of the time in Westeros.

“Well,” he says, “then I think I have a proposition for you.”

“All right.”

“Seems to me like you’re in dire need of some good karma. And as far as I am concerned, I might not have remembered until ten minutes ago, even if – I kinda always had a feeling, I’ll tell you when you’re not royally drunk off your ass, but anyway, I died thinking I was twenty years too late. You don’t even know how much –” He stops, puts a hand on Robb’s cheek, cupping it so tenderly Robb might cry. “How much I wished I could make it up for it. And – well. Looks like we really were idiots if now we’re – _we’re_.”

“Right. So?”

“So you should come in with me. Something tells me you weren’t gonna go to school tomorrow anyway. I have a pretty nice bed, which is admittedly the only decent thing about that apartment, and I’m still not that kinda creep. So – come in, sleep this off, tomorrow I’m making you breakfast and we’ll talk about it when you’re sober, and we can spend the weekend making up for lost time?”

“Sounds – sounds very nice,” Robb chokes, wishing he could see something other than a blur, but then one of Theon’s hands goes tentatively up to his hair.

“Actually, I just realized something,” he says. “If you’re eighteen in three months and we’re _soulmates_ , I don’t think you have to share rooms with fucking Joffrey Baratheon if you don’t want to. Mind it, my apartment’s really cramped. But –”

“Wait. Wait, are you saying that –”

“I’m saying it could be that you were singing the wrong depressing as fuck boyband hit, before.”

“Really. And which was the right one?”

“Let me think – oh, right. _I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you’ve been, as long as you love me_ maybe?”

Robb can’t help that – he laughs, even if it still sounds kinda hysterical, his fingers still tangled in Theon’s nice button-down white shirt as his forehead touches Theon’s.

“Yeah, guess that sounds somewhat better. Shit, my head hurts.”

“I can smell on your breath how much it must hurt. What was that, whiskey?”

“Hey, it was good.”

“No, it was pretty fucking cheap. Never mind, come on, we should get inside. You think I should give a call to –”

“Let them fucking worry if they get worried,” Robb slurs – now he’s feeling drunk all over again. Shit.

“You make a really fucking lousy drunk, Stark.”

“It’s Snow these days.”

“Yeah, something tells me it shouldn’t be. Right, there you go, just don’t throw up on the new shoes.”

_‘Course you’d care about the shoes_ , Robb thinks inconsequentially as Theon drags him back into the house and up one floor – thank fuck it wasn’t more than that. When Theon finally opens a door, hauls him in and kicks it closed, Robb realizes what Theon meant with cramped – it’s basically a one-bedroom flat. The kitchenette is on the left, on the right there’s space for a desk covered in books and notes and then there’s a queen-sized bed that takes up probably too much space. In the kitchen area there’s also a table with a few chairs, plus a small bookcase filled to the brink, next to a fairly large armchair. There’s also a small door next to the bookcase – Robb figures it has to be the bathroom.

“Home sweet home,” Theon proclaims. “If you have to throw up, bathroom’s over there.”

“Don’t think so,” Robb says dropping down on the bed. “I hold it pretty well.”

“Considering you’re seventeen, that’s mildly fucking worrying.”

“Since when you’re this responsible?”

“Since my mother woke up one morning when I was ten, packed up some bags and moved herself, me and Asha to our uncle’s. Always wondered why it was so sudden,” he says as he tugs off Robb’s old boots and goes to put them in a corner. “Now I think I know. I’ve got to ask her if she remembered – old Westeros, I guess. Anyway, you can worry about that when you’re sobered up. Here, put on something more comfortable.”

Theon throws some pjs at him and Robb somehow manages to get out of his clothes and into Theon’s – they’re all large on him, but they’re also clean and smell of fucking lemon, gods, and then Theon comes out of the bathroom wearing a similar pair, puts back the covers and pushes Robb underneath them. Shit, Theon does have a comfortable bed, surely more than the crappy one at the group home, and when Theon puts an arm around his waist and moves closer he kind of wants to cry all over again for how comfortable it feels.

“Get some goddamned sleep, we’ll sort this out in the morning.”

So he closes his eyes and he does, and he doesn’t think that going to sleep has ever felt this good in his entire life – if this is why people like falling asleep with someone else rather than on their own, he can see their point.

The following morning, he’s nursing the headache to end all headaches, and he’s mildly disappointed that he’s alone in bed, but it lasts a moment.

“Congratulations, it’s three in the afternoon,” Theon cheerfully tells him from the desk where he was putting books in order or something.

“ _What_?”

“You obviously had to sleep it off. Anyway, I suppose I can’t exactly make you breakfast, so you’ll have to make do. Tea or coffee?”

“Uh, coffee, please, I –”

“Coffee it is. So, while I work on that, I imagine that you might want to know what I was up to this morning.”

“… Okay?”

“Great. So,” Theon starts again as he tinkers around the coffee machine, “I woke up at around nine, and you were dead to the world, and I took the liberty of taking a look at your wallet just so that I’d know which group home you were in. Never mind that I figured it’d be the next one over, but you can never know. I called them,” he keeps on as he takes a tray and some cutlery out of a cupboard, “and it turns out that they didn’t even notice that you were gone.”

“Sounds like them,” Robb agrees. His throat sounds sore.

“Real stand up social workers, these people. I wonder what was their real life call. So I might have asked around some more, and I told them that I ran into you in the evening and turned out we were soulmates, and that I was of age and so on. By the way, does one of them have a grudge against you or something? Slynt or what the fuck he was named?”

“Probably. Broke his nose once because he was harping on some poor new kid who did something wrong and he was about to make him cry.”

“ _Upstanding._ Anyway, guy starts on a tirade, says you’re a disgrace and all that jazz and he really feels sorry for me since I got saddled with you as a soulmate. Nice guy, right?”

“Yeah, my ass. And how did that end?”

“There comes be best part.” Theon stops for a moment as the coffee machine beeps. “Do you take it with sugar?”

“No, black.”

“Your funeral.” He puts the coffee on the tray, then heads for the fridge. “So I ask Slynt if at this point we might not reach a nice agreement for all of us.”

“As in?”

“As in, I told him I was more than entirely willing to take you in even now. And I’m pretty sure that if someone could kiss people over the phone, he might have frenched me.”

And with that, he comes back from the kitchenette and puts the tray on Robb’s lap. There’s the coffee, some aspirin, a glass of water and a generous piece of strawberry shortcake.

“That cake is the only good one they have in the bakery two blocks over, figured I’d buy something decent on the way back from getting the papers.”

“Wait, wait, you got _papers_?”

“I told Slynt no time like the present. You still looked like you weren’t gonna wake up anytime soon. I went there, grabbed the papers, gave that bastard my address so they could deliver your stuff and came back. I’m pretty sure he breached a lot of protocol there, but he just couldn’t believe you weren’t going to _be his problem anymore_. Now, I highly doubt we’d both get by on my scholarship, but it sounds like in this kind of situation I can apply for financial help until you’re out of school or shit, so we should be good. I bet it’s nice stuff to wake up to, isn’t it?”

“Theon –”

“Nope. You eat that first, then we start crying about our feelings like the girls we are not. Got it?”

“Got it,” he finally answers, trying not to let it show that he might really be about to start crying his eyes out all over again. He drinks the coffee – which is blissfully strong and bitter – and swallows down the aspirin, which does help with the headache. And the shortcake also tastes pretty good – when he’s done, he doesn’t want to say he feels like a new man but he feels a lot better.

Theon smirks as he moves the tray to the desk, and then he climbs up on the bed, and damn but he looks just stunning, with his long-ish dark hair let down on his shoulders and that genuine smile on his face. Never mind that – oh, dear, he’s actually wearing an ironed shirt. And ironed jeans. Of course he would, Robb thinks, back in the day he paid entirely too much attention to his clothes – he figures that this twenty first century does agree with him in that sense.

“There. Promised you that breakfast, didn’t I?”

And – he doesn’t say it, but Robb can hear it somewhere, _and I said I would be your brother now and always back then and I meant to keep it this time if you’ll let me_.

Well, it’s not like he has any doubts.

“You know, you said you’re not _that kind of creep_ before.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I think you haven’t counted one thing.”

“As in?”

“Do you think _I_ am a blushing virgin?”

“Wait, what are you exactly –”

“I mean that _I’m not_. I haven’t been for years. And the first time – let’s say I was thirteen and she was seventeen.”

“… you did _what_?”

“Hey, I was perfectly willing and it was her last week at my… third group home? Yeah, it was the third.”

“How the hell – oh, man, if I think about what – never mind.”

Robb shrugs. “Hey, it wasn’t anything sordid or shady or what have you. Also I rememberd the fucking Red Wedding when I was _five_ , I was hardly some innocent pale flower. Anyway, her name was Gilly, and like, she was always nice to everyone in general and only got shit for it, and at some point this other kid her age, I can’t even remember the name but he was a jerk, had started chatting her up and stuff and she liked him and they ended up screwing. For like, a week, and then he dumped her and started talking not so behind her back as usual. Except that it wasn’t that big of a place so of course she ended up teased to hell and back, all right? So one day I went up to her and told her I was sorry about it and people were idiots and she shouldn’t mind. And – I really thought she looked cute, y’know. So I told her that, too, and – things happened, okay? It was nice. We even used all the necessary protection. Anyway, the next day was one of her last, she was gonna leave anyway also because she was all set to move in with this friend of hers from school and they’d go to college together the next month. So, the first guy who had started this whole mess starts harassing her again while she was writing up job applications in the common area and I punched him in the face, too. That was about it. Why the hell are you laughing?”

“For fuck’s sake, Robb, and for a moment I thought you had changed one bit.”

“What?”

“Come on, you’re telling me that you ended up in that situation out of knight in shining armor syndrome, you haven’t changed.”

“Right, whatever, that wasn’t the point of that. The point of that was – that maybe I have a _type_.”

“You have a type.”

“A type four years older than me. Theon, just stop trying to hijack the knight in shining armor syndrome from me, it never was your thing. I just wanted to say, you want to kiss me, _get the fuck over here and do it_.”

For a moment they stare at each other, and then Theon grins again and goes, “Well, if that’s the way it is,” and then he moves forward, puts a hand behind Robb’s neck and draws him closer and closer and closer until their lips finally meet each other, and –

And then he thinks, _well if this is why I had to spend eighteen miserable years like that I think it might be worth it_ , because it’s not just good. He’s kissed plenty of people since he was thirteen, never mind that he might have grown a reputation for being fairly easy in that sense, not that he ever gave a damn. But this is nothing such as that. It’s – right. This whole soulmates thing isn’t a joke – it’s different. It’s not just that Theon’s still kissing him as if this were some corny romance movie, and he’s being slow and thorough and his hands are either carding through his hair or cupping his face throughout, and it’s making Robb’s heart skip a beat here and there for how nice of a kiss it is. It’s that it feels _right_ in a way that nothing else has felt right in his entire life, as mushy as it sounds, and he doesn’t think he’s ever kissed someone like they were made of spun glass, the way _he_ is being kissed exactly like that right now. It’s almost exhilarating, and when they have to move apart because there’s a limit to how long you can kiss someone, he’s smiling so hard it almost hurts.

“Well,” he says, not even trying to hide how elated he feels. “That was good. We should totally do it again. Soon. Very soon.”

“Guess someone’s just figured out that it’s going to be hard for me to tell them no, or am I wrong?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think I’m going to take advantage of that.”

“Yeah, sure you wouldn’t. Not if you haven’t changed that much at all,” Theon says, sounding so impossibly fond he might burst with it, and then he moves closer again, and Robb thinks he might be going for kissing again, but instead he just – drags him forward until they’re holding each other, just that, and damn but yesterday he was too drunk and wound up to just appreciate it, and now that it’s happening –

His hands clutch at Theon’s shoulders as the warm afternoon sun fills the room, thinking to himself this has to be what happiness feels like, and at that he might go rigid, just slightly, but it’s enough for Theon to notice.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Maybe what’s right.”

“What?”

“No, it’s just – I don’t think I ever felt this good in my entire life, all right? It’s weird. But it’s – the good kind of. Really. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

“Now and always?” Robb blurts out, not really sure of why he brought that up in the open –

“Sure. Sounds like a plan,” Theon says, and it’s entirely too smooth for his own good, but he’s kissing Robb again before he can point that out. And it’s okay, Robb supposes, they’ll have plenty of time for that.

For now he can just enjoy the moment, and if it’s just the beginning – then maybe for the first time in his life he’s looking forward to what comes next, too.

 

End.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is Theon's POV of the 'shit we're soulmates' part of this fic that the original lovely requester asked for a meme on tumblr, I figured I'd add it to this one for completion. :)

“Fuck you, I’m eighteen in three months,” the red-haired kid says, and it doesn’t make Theon change his mind about offering him the armchair - if anything, because words might say something but his face is the face of someone who is  _moved_  at the offer, and if you’re moved at someone offering to let you sleep off your hangover in their one-bedroom flat, then your life _really_  must suck. Then again, he did say he’s from a group home, and if he’s almost eighteen and he’s  _this_  drunk, yeah, that’s not a huge stretch. Never mind that he’s  _familiar_  - Theon doesn’t know what it is about the guy’s blue eyes and his voice and his  _I’m a wet red kitten lost in an alleyway_ face that screams  _you met before_ , but it does. It’s not even new - sometimes he does get that feeling. He got it back on the islands, he got it once when he saw a picture of the ruins of the Winterfell castle on a magazine, he didn’t go on a university trip to the ones of the Dreadfort because the moment he saw the pictures on the brochure they gave him he felt sick to his stomach for a reason he hasn’t quite pinpointed yet. Anyway, there’s nothing  _bad_  about the kid and really, Theon can guess how he’s feeling right now. Ten years spent with his father and brothers can make him guess plenty fine.

So he takes a step forward and reaches out when he sees that his maybe-guest is about to fall down on his own feet for how drunk he is.

“That wasn’t a no. Really, that’s okay, the couch’s pretty comfortable for that –”

He was about to say  _matter_.

Then he touches the kid’s arm, just over a rip in his sleeve, so his fingers are in contact with bare skin, and -

_There’s a red-haired boy dressed up in furs who looks at him with curiosity as he arrives at Winterfell and doesn’t look at him wrong when he introduces himself as Robb Stark, and then he comes to find him a few days later and asks him if he wants to be shown around and that he looks lonely and that he shouldn’t be_  -

_They’re sparring on the stairs leading up to one of the towers and laughing as they do and damn but Robb has no right to be better than him with swords even if he’s younger but it doesn’t matter -_

_“I don’t know what’s wrong in King’s Landing, but I don’t like this.”_  
“You should call the banners, you know that?”  


_“He’s dead, he’s_ dead _, they killed him, oh gods what do I do now -”_  
“You avenge him,” Theon replies as Robb sobs against his shoulder -  


_“Are you my brother, now and always?”  
_

_“You don’t have to call me your grace when no one is around.”  
_

_He’s feeling sick to his stomach after dreaming of Robb walking in the main hall covered in blood and he’s throwing up when he’s told that he really is dead, and_ Reek why would you cry for someone you don’t know, that’s not good at all _-_

_slain at the red wedding, butchered by the freys, where was I IshouldhavebeenwithhimIshouldhavediedwithhim -_

_He’s sitting down in front of blank paper holding up a quill with shaking fingers and thinking that it’s not going to do anyone any good but he still wants others to know in the future that_ he never meant that _-_

_He’s staring out of the window in his small room at Harlaw and it’s been fifteen years and things are not so bad now but he still misses Robb like he misses a limb, and he can attest that it’s an accurate comparison, and he thinks that when he dies it’s going to still be too late never mind that Robb surely isn’t in one of the seven hells he’s headed to -_

And then he looks at the kid who  _is not just a random red-haired kid oh damn it what is happening what is this oh gods oh gods is that him of course it’s him_  he thinks as he feels warm all over and his fingers grip at Robb’s arm more tightly. He closes his eyes, tries to take it all in because  _shit_  now that’s  _something_ , and maybe he wants to scream because now he knows _why_  he disliked the Dreadfort so much just at the bare mention, but -

But then he realizes that he’s not the one who has the worst deal here, so he’ll think about that later. A lot later.

He opens his eyes and looks down at Robb who’s - well, looking tentatively hopeful and still too drunk for being seventeen and whose face is pretty much saying  _please don’t be the umpteenth person that lets me down here_ , which - is fucking darned ridiculous because he should be wanting to punch him. Never mind that he still feels warm all over and his spine is tingling and _ah, don’t people say you know your soulmate when you touch them_? Because in this case a lot of things make sense. Including how and why things went so wrong for them the first time round.

Still, he figures they can talk about that later.

“For fuck’s –  _Robb_? What the hell happened to you?”

Maybe that wasn’t the best way to break the ice. But then he doesn’t really know what to expect.

Surely not Robb’s face to pretty much  _crumple down in relief_  - his lower lip trembles for a moment and then he closes his eyes and pretty much throws himself at him, and no, the last reaction Theon would have expected would have been  _Robb crying his eyes out on his shoulder_  but he’s not going to question that. He doesn’t waste time in grasping back at his waist, and then he just sits down on the ground because it’ll be more comfortable, and maybe he starts running hands over Robb’s back as he cries it out. It just makes Robb shake harder against him, and damn but he really wants to know  _what happened_.

There’ll be time for that later, though, he figures. For now he’ll just let him get it off his chest, and meanwhile he starts to list all the ways he can try and step up to fix this damned situation because there’s no way in the seven hells that he’s going to let Robb grab his jacket and go back to  _the group home next door_. Which always looked kind of shitty to him, but that’s not the point now either. They probably should talk first, but he sees that it’s not the right moment either.

So for now he just waits it out, clutches at Robb’s back and lets him get it off his chest, and he thinks to himself that whatever went wrong the first time, he’s not going to be as much of an idiot as he was back then - maybe if they had a second chance at this it’s high time they get it right, isn’t it?

 

End.


End file.
